by Terry Brooks
Strabo tossed away a stray hoof and looked up at them expectantly. “Now, then, let’s hear what you have to say.”
Ben tried to refrain from gritting his teeth. “We have come to ask your help with something,” he began, and got no further.
“Save your breath, Holiday,” the dragon interrupted with a curt wave of one foreleg. “I’ve already given you all the help you’re getting in this lifetime—more help, in point of fact, then you ever deserved.”
“Hear me out at least,” Ben urged irritably.
“Must I?” The dragon shifted as if trying to get comfortable. “Well, for the sake of the lovely young lady, I will.”
Ben decided to cut to the chase. “Mistaya is missing. We think she has been taken prisoner by King Rydall of Marnhull. At least he claims to have her. We are trying to get her back.”
Strabo stared at him without speaking for a moment. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about? Mistaya? Rydall of Marnhull? Who are these people?”
“Mistaya is our daughter,” Willow said quickly, interceding before Ben lost his temper completely. “You helped Ben find us when I was carrying her out of the Deep Fell.”
“Ah, yes, I remember.” The dragon beamed. “Good of me, wasn’t it? And you’ve named her Mistaya? Very pretty. I like the name. It sings with the promise of your own beauty.”
Gag me with a spoon, Ben thought blackly, but kept his mouth shut.
“She is a beautiful child,” Willow agreed, keeping the dragon’s attention focused on her. “I love her very much, and I am determined to see her safely home again.”
“Of course you are,” Strabo affirmed indignantly. “Who is this King Rydall who’s taken her?”
“We don’t know. We were hoping you could help.” Willow waited.
Strabo shook his horn-crusted head slowly. “No. No, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of him. Another in a long line of lesser Kings, I expect. There’s literally hundreds of them, all parading about, all posturing as if anyone of note could ever for a minute be impressed.” He gave Holiday a meaningful glance. “Anyway, whoever he is, I don’t know him. And he’s from some place called Marnhull? Really? Marnhull? Sounds like what’s left after you crack a nut open.”
The dragon laughed uproariously, the laughter culminating in a choked gasp as he fell backward into one of the Fire Springs, sending ashes and shattered rock flying everywhere. He hauled himself upright with an effort. “Marnhull! Ridiculous!”
“So you’ve never heard of either?” Ben pressed, unable to keep silent any longer.
“Never.” Strabo snorted dirt and steam from his nostrils. “They don’t exist, either of them.”
“Not outside Landover, beyond the fairy mists, perhaps?” Ben pressed, disbelieving. “Not even there?”
The great black head swung sharply about. “Holiday, pay attention here. I have traveled all the lands that ever were and a few that weren’t. I have been to all those that surround the mists. I have been well beyond. I have been alive a long time, and travel has always agreed with me—especially when I find places where I am not welcome and can feed on the inhabitants.”
The yellow eyes lidded. “So. If a land called Marnhull existed, I would have found it. If a King named Rydall existed, I would have heard of him. I haven’t. So they don’t.”
“Well someone calling himself King Rydall exists, because he’s come to Sterling Silver twice now to threaten me, claims he’s taken Mistaya, and promises to send monsters to try to kill me!” Ben’s patience was at an end. “Mistaya’s disappeared, and I’ve been attacked three times already! something’s happening, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t,” the dragon declared with studied disinterest, “since I don’t know what you are talking about. I have better things to do than to keep up on the local gossip. If you’ve been attacked, it’s news to me. Rather unimportant news, I might add.”
Willow took Ben’s arm and gently pulled him back, then stepped forward to face the dragon. “Strabo, listen to me, please. I realize what we are telling you is of little personal interest. You are involved in much larger concerns than ours. And if you say you have never heard of Rydall or Marnhull, then it must be so. Everyone knows that dragons never lie.”
This was the first time Ben had heard of that, but it appeared to please Strabo, who gave a courtly nod in response.
“Now, I must ask you as someone who has been my friend,” Willow continued, “to consider helping me find my daughter. She has disappeared, and we have searched the whole of Landover for her without success. We have spoken with everyone we could think of in an effort to discover where she is. No one can help. You are our last hope. We thought that if anyone would know of Rydall or Marnhull, it would be you. Please, is there anything you could tell us, anything at all that might be of help? Is there anyone you know who might be Rydall? Or any place that might be Marnhull?”
The dragon was silent for a long time. All about him the Fire Springs belched and coughed, spewing forth ashes and smoke. The grayness of the day deepened as the sun drifted west, and the clouds locked together in the skies overhead to form a solid covering. Below the clouds and smoke the landscape stretched away in numbing solitude, bleak and desolate.
“I treasure my privacy,” Strabo said finally. “That’s why I live out here, you know.”
“I know,” Willow acknowledged.
The dragon sighed. “Very well. Tell me more of Rydall. Tell me whatever you either know or suspect.”
Willow did so, leaving out nothing but the information about the medallion. When she was finished, Strabo thought some more.
“Well, Holiday,” he advised softly, “it appears I must help you once again, even though it is against my better judgment. Such help as you receive, however, is due entirely to my considerable affection for the lovely sylph.”
He cleared his throat. “Nothing passes through the fairy mists without my knowing. That is simply the way of things. Dragons have excellent hearing and eyesight, and nothing escapes their attention.” He paused, considering. “If they deem it worthy of their attention, that is.” He appeared to remember his earlier disclaimer of any knowledge about what had been taking place at Sterling Silver. “The point is, no one has come through the mists recently. But even if I were mistaken in this—and a lapse in my attention span could have occurred just as Rydall or whoever was passing through, I suppose—there would still be a discoverable trace of that passing. In short, I could find out anyway.”
He gave them a broad smile and added, “If I were to choose to do so.” He cocked his ugly head at Willow. “I wonder, my Lady, if you would favor me with one of your exquisite songs. I do miss the sound of a maiden’s voice now and then.”
It was his favorite thing in all the world, and although once it would have embarrassed him to ask, he seemed to have gotten over his discomfort. Willow had been expecting this. Her success in charming him before had been due in large part to her singing, so she did not hesitate now to do so again. There was an unspoken bargain being made, and the price the dragon was asking for his help was certainly small enough. Willow sang of meadows and wildflowers filled with dancing maidens and of a dragon who was lord over all. Ben had never heard the song and found it more than a little saccharine, but Strabo lay his horn-crusted head on the rim of one of the springs and got very dreamy-eyed.
By the time she had finished he was almost reduced to the limpness of a noodle. Tears leaked from his lantern eyes.
“When you return from your search,” she called over to him, reminding him of his end of the bargain, “I will sing one more song for you as a further reward.”
Strabo’s head lifted slowly from its resting place, and his teeth showed in a pathetically futile attempt at a smile. “Je t’adore,” he advised softly.
Without another word great wings spread from his serpent’s body and lifted him skyward, circling up and away until he was lost from view.
They waited through the re
mainder of the day and all night for his return. Bunion went back for their blankets, and all three took turns standing watch, settled down on the windward side of the Fire Springs so they would not have to breathe the smoke and soot. Flames licked out of the craters, and molten rock belched forth at regular intervals, effectively disrupting attempts to sleep. The heat was intense at times, relieved only when a small breeze blew across them on its way to a better place. But they were safe enough, for nothing would dare to venture into the dragon’s lair.
It was nearing dawn when Strabo returned. He came out of a sky in which Landover’s moons were already down and the stars were fading into a faintly brightening east, his bulk a massive dark shadow that might have been a chunk of sky unexpectedly broken away. He settled earthward as smoothly and delicately as a great butterfly, without sound, without effort, belying his monstrous bulk.
“Lady,” he greeted Willow in his deep, raspy voice. There was weariness and regret in that single word. “I have flown the four borders of the land, from Fire Springs to Melchor, from Greensward to lake country, from one range of mountains and mists to the other. I have searched the whole of the boundaries that mark the passage from Landover to the fairy worlds. I have smelled all tracks, studied all markings, and hunted for the smallest sign. There is no trace of Rydall of Marnhull. There is no trace of your child.”
“None?” Willow asked quietly, as if perhaps he might reconsider his answer.
The dragon’s gnarled head swung away. “No one has passed through the mists in recent days. No one.” He yawned, showing row upon row of blackened, crooked teeth. “Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get some sleep. I am sorry, but I can do nothing more. I release you from your pledge to sing further. I regret to say I am too tired to listen. Good-bye to you. Good-bye, Holiday. Come again sometime, but not for a while, hmmm?”
He crawled off through the rocks, snaked his way down between the simmering craters, curled up amid the debris, and promptly began to snore.
Ben and Willow stared at each other. “I don’t understand it,” Ben said finally. “How can there be no sign at all?”
Willow’s face was pale and drawn. “If Rydall did not come through the mists, where did he come from? Where is he now? What has he done with Mistaya?”
Ben shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.” He reached down for his blanket and began to fold it up. “What I do know is that something about all this isn’t right, and one way or another I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
Taking Willow’s hand in his own and with Bunion leading the way, he turned disconsolately from the Fire Springs and the sleeping dragon and started back toward their horses.
WURM
They rode out from the Fire Springs and back into the Wastelands, heading west. The sun crested the horizon behind them in a hazy white ball, obscured by mist and clouds and the thickness of heat on the summer air. Already it was hot and threatening to grow hotter. Clouds rolled in from the west, beginning to build on one another, promising rain before the day was done. Ahead, the land stretched away, stark and unchanging.
Ben rode in silence, his mood as bleak and despairing as the land he traveled. He was putting up a brave front, but he knew he had run out of options. Strabo had been his last chance. Since the dragon couldn’t tell him how to find Rydall, he was faced with the unpleasant possibility that no one could. And if he couldn’t find Rydall, he couldn’t find Mistaya or Questor Thews or Abernathy. If he couldn’t find his daughter and his friends, he would have no other choice but to return to Sterling Silver and sit around waiting for the rest of Rydall’s monsters to come for him. Three down and four to go; it was not a comforting thought. They had almost had him several times already—almost had the Paladin, he corrected, but it was the same thing. He didn’t think he could survive four more, and if he did, he didn’t really believe he would get Mistaya back, anyway.
It was a terrible thought, and he cursed himself silently for thinking it. But it was true. It was what he believed. Rydall wasn’t the sort to keep a bargain, not this man who devoured countries, who sent monsters to kill their Kings, and who kidnapped children and used them as hostages. No, Rydall played games with his victims, and when you played games of his sort, you made up the rules as you went along so that you didn’t lose. It didn’t matter if the Paladin survived all seven challengers or not. Mistaya wasn’t coming back.
Unless Ben found her and brought her back himself.
Which at the moment he didn’t seem to have the slightest hope of doing.
He thought about what Strabo had told him. There was no sign of Rydall’s passage through the fairy mists now or any time in the recent past. There was no sign of Mistaya. So what did that tell him? That Rydall was lying? That Strabo had missed something? But Rydall had said he had come through the fairy mists. He had said his army was prepared to follow. Through the mists. Maybe, Ben thought suddenly, Rydall’s black-cloaked companion had magic that facilitated this and left no trail. Maybe the magic was such that it could conceal the point of passage. But wouldn’t Strabo have found some trace of that magic? Nothing escaped the dragon. Had Rydall been able to do what no one else could and deceive the beast?
Then it occurred to Ben that there was another way into Landover, a way he had forgotten about—through the demon world of Abbadon. Could it be that Rydall had gained entry from there? But in order to do so he would have had to bypass the demons. Or win their support, as the Gorse had done, promising them something in return. Could Marnhull’s King have done that? It didn’t feel right. The demons hated humans; they never made bargains with them unless they were forced to. It was one thing to ally themselves with the Gorse, itself a creature of dark magic. It was another to join forces with someone like Rydall. Besides, Rydall had said that he had come through the mists, and that was not the same thing as coming out of Abaddon.
Jurisdiction was proceeding at a walk, picking his way carefully over the rocky ground, moving so slowly that they were barely making any progress at all. Ben was oblivious, lost in thought. Willow rode next to him, watching his face, not wanting to distract him. Bunion walked beside them, bright eyes shifting from one to the other, then back to the barren land ahead. It was no concern of his. Behind them the Fire Springs had disappeared into the curve of the horizon, leaving little more than a dark smudge of smoke and ash against the sky.
A crow with red eyes appeared out of the retreating night to the west and circled lazily overhead, unseen.
What was it he was missing? Ben wondered. Surely there was something he had overlooked, or mistaken, or failed to recognize—something that would lead him to Rydall. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Assume for the moment that Rydall was lying about who and what he was and where he came from. It was a fair enough assumption given Rydall’s disposition toward game playing. Invent the rules of a game, put them in play, and wait to see what would happen—that seemed to fit with what he knew of Rydall. The question he had asked himself earlier and then not gotten back to for an answer was, Why was Rydall doing all this? It had been the River Master’s question as well. Why was Marnhull’s King sending monsters to challenge Ben instead of simply demanding his life in exchange for Mistaya’s? Why was he spending so much time challenging the Paladin to individual duels when he could just as easily have marched his army into Landover and taken it by force? To avoid bloodshed and loss of life? That didn’t seem likely.
In fact—and admittedly this was a stretch—Ben was beginning to question if Rydall had any real interest in Landover at all.
Because the truth was that this entire business was beginning to feel very personal. Ben couldn’t put his finger on why, but he definitely sensed it. It was something about those monsters, the nature of their magic, and the manner of their attack. Something. The confrontation between Rydall and himself looked to have more to do with the two of them than with Landover. Landover seemed almost an excuse, a pawn to be played and then discarded. Rydall didn’t appear to
be in any hurry to complete his conquest. No time limits had been imposed regarding the passing of the throne, and no mention had been made of when a transition was expected to take place. All that seemed to matter was the contest.
Why was Rydall wasting so much time if all he wanted was to persuade Ben to give up the throne? Wouldn’t Ben do that anyway if it meant getting Mistaya back safely?
Wouldn’t he?
He looked quickly at Willow, a pang of guilt lancing through him as he hesitated with his answer. She was staring back at him, but no condemnation or suspicion registered in her green eyes, only concern and sadness and, behind it all, unfailing love. He was suddenly ashamed. He knew the answer, didn’t he? When his wife in his old world, Annie, and their unborn child had died, he had thought he would never recover; they were gone, and he could not get them back again. Now he had Willow and Mistaya, and he could not bear losing them as well. He would give up anything to keep them.
Midmorning had arrived, and the Wastelands were hazy—bright and sweltering.
Ben turned to Willow. “Another mile or so and we’ll stop and rest,” he told her. “And we’ll talk things out a bit.”
She nodded and said nothing. They rode slowly on.
Overhead, the crow with red eyes wheeled back the way it had come and was gone.
Nightshade flew quickly to the draw through which Holiday and his companions would pass, holding the struggling wurm firmly in her beak. She could barely keep her rage in check. She had waited all night for him to come to her, believing he must, certain that the dragon would offer no help and send him away. Instead, the beast had gone hunting for him—hunting, like some tame dog!—and Holiday had not come back as expected but had camped within the confines of the Fire Springs, a place she could not safely penetrate even with her formidable magic. So she had been forced to wait, to spend the entire night in the Wastelands keeping watch over her prize.